PESHAWAR, Feb 27: United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) Sergio Viera de Mello has urged Islamabad to address the issue of honour killing and amend all discriminatory laws to grant full freedom to women.

Talking to newsmen during a visit to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) here on Wednesday, the high commissioner said that he raised the matter of honour killing, attacks on minorities and other categories of the population that felt discrimination with prime minister and other senior officials.

He said that he discussed issues related to women rights and minorities with the prime minister and speaker National Assembly and asked them to translate these areas into good laws.

Mr Mello said: “We are not here to criticize, but to help the government,” adding that senior government functionaries had given him full assurance that issues related to individual rights would be addressed in a very responsible manner and would take its (the UN body’s) views into account.

He said the UN human rights body had offered maximum technical cooperation and assistance to Islamabad in order to improve the state of human rights in the country and to protect the rights of individuals.

When asked about the nature of assistance to be provided by his organisation to Pakistan, he said his office could provide training in various areas including judiciary, capacity building of parliamentarians, police officials, education and other sectors.

He said that Islamabad had been asked to identify those areas in which his office could provide maximum assistance.

The commissioner said that anti-terrorism strategies also came under discussion.

Replying to a question, he said that internal situation in Afghanistan was not entirely conducive for repatriation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan.

He said that he will soon visit Afghanistan to discuss the human rights situation, the rehabilitation of displaced people with the Afghan transitional government authorities.

Earlier, Miss Lisbeth V. Pilegaard, resident representative of NRC, briefed the high commissioner about assistance offered to Afghan refugees in Pakistan and inside Afghanistan.